Apple Trees
by The Brat Prince
Summary: He thinks of crepe paper strung liberally across the ceiling and couples spinning like the ballerina in Katie's favorite music box. Hands sweaty against his brand spanking new uniform slacks, staring at James across the crowd, paralyzed by how much he- no. Kendall/James, WWII AU.


**Apple Trees (If We Come Marching Home)**

A/N: Oh god, so I can feel the ghostly specters of all my grandparents smacking me across the face for this. Grandma's super vicious with her cane. Um, but yeah. Here. Full disclosure: I'm aware that trench-sex wasn't actually really a thing in WW2, although men did spend more time alone in foxholes than they did in say, WW1, when they were pushed in together like sardines. Other interesting facts: surround sound was first used in 1940 for Fantasia, they really did hand out pamphlets about VD, and I can't believe I wrote this.

* * *

He's never understood why writers compare the sound of bombs to that of fireworks.

Sure, there's a big loud bang and a flash, light and noise and a boom that rumbles through his chest like the brass section starting up, but they're two different kinds of explosions. One's the thunk of mortar hitting soil, the thud of boot-stomps, desperate to get away, adrenaline pumping so damn hard through his veins that it feels like his heart might up and stop in protest. Bombs sound like every deep dark childhood fear he ever had, growling monsters sitting in the back of the closet and the crunch of a shovel hitting grave dirt and the crackle snap pop of falling through thick ice, passing the surface of hoarfrost into a kind of cold that bit into his bones. It's terror that mutes the sound of screams for long moments at a time until they come back in surround sound and – boom. Pink mist.

That's all she wrote.

Unless you're fast- he's fast, real fast, and who knew that varsity jacket of his actually had real world applications- and then you get the joy and the pleasure of waiting to see if you'll get shredded to bits _next time_.

There's always a next time, and Kendall really hates waiting.

Fireworks, now, they always come on schedule, or close to. They bring with them color, blueredsilver that sends stars spiraling on the back of his eyelids, and the soundtrack is different, laughter and chatter and yip yapping. The only screams piercing through are those of kids, playing in hydrants and under splintered picnic benches, and even those mostly get lost beneath the tinny, distant sound of the grandstand band playing across the lake, summer breathing heat on his skin.

The ground shakes underneath his feet, and yessir, that is definitely not fireworks.

"They're getting closer," James comments idly, flicking filthy cards down on their makeshift table, the back of a cardboard box scrounged from somewhere. "Pocket aces," he adds with a pointed two fingered jab.

"Again? You're a cheat."

"M'not. Just 'cause you didn't listen to Katie when she taught us how t'play." James's words are mumbled, lips wrapped around the butt of a cigarette. He says it's his last one, and he'll say it about the next one, too, and the next after that. He never learned how to share.

The paper at the tip glows ember-soft, tendrils of smoke whispering up into the chill, clear night.

"I listened. I'm distracted," Kendall retorts, the thready strains of a drinking song drifting out from a nearby foxhole, something learned from a country they've never seen, going, _she's just a ground-loving whore, she'll whine and she'll wheeze and make straight for the trees_…Kendall focuses on James, on here, now, cards laying in the dirt. "Sorry."

"What're you thinking 'bout?"

_Just give me operations way out on some lonely atoll, for I am too young to die. I just want to grow old_.

Kendall leans back, digs his fingers into dirt and mutters, "Fireworks."

James eyes his grip on the earth, half-caked mud squeezing between his knuckles, just a little wet. They'd heard this field used to be fallow, but once the trenches were dug, it began looking up; blood and sweat and decay are a baseline for good crops. Maybe in the future, if the war ever ends, something will spring up.

The war ending is a pretty big if.

"Yeah?" James knocks their ankles together, the jolt barely tangible through leather gone soft with age. "Homesick?"

Kendall won't dignify that with an answer. There isn't anyone in this hellhole that isn't hurting for leave.

James sighs and stoops to his knees, and god, he looks like shit. How could he not? Between months in the trenches and the constant rain of bullets- rain of bullets, now there's a real biblical plague- things like sleep and hygiene have fallen so far by the wayside that Kendall doesn't remember what hot water on his skin actually feels like. Still the distant thunder –whistlebamboom and comic book punctuation!- of mortar shells and ember-glow of James's cigarette and half thoughts about Independence Day marching bands make Kendall think of a different time, different music, different lighting, and James more handsome than he's ever been.

He thinks of crepe paper strung liberally across the ceiling and couples spinning like the ballerina in Katie's favorite music box. Hands sweaty against his brand spanking new uniform slacks, staring at James across the crowd, paralyzed by how much he- _no_.

He isn't going to think about that here, with James inching towards him, hands and knees and smoke curling from his lips. He is every dirty dream Kendall's ever had, and he is also making a mess of their game. "What are you doing?"

"Coming to comfort you," James replies happily. He sounds so young and looks so old, hellish gold glow of embers and starlight in his eyes. Kendall's blood kicks up a panic, heating his cheeks, conducting a mad dash south. He's warped, completely twisted, and James absolutely cannot know. He licks his lips nervously.

"I'm fine. Um." His voice pitches up when James settles his hands on Kendall's knees, and oh, oh no, his stomach doesn't have any business parachuting down to his feet like that. "You can't-"

_Get this close to me_, Kendall thinks, but he manages to cut the words off just in time, breathing unsteady.

James's lips quirk, "I can't…?"

He is such a bastard. Kendall is acutely aware that they're the only ones in this ditch, the rest of their platoon scattered forward and aft, the whole company hunkered down for the night, long as the fight doesn't move much closer. It's not a guarantee of privacy; runners dart between the trenches all the time, carting messages and food and sometimes simply stretching their legs. The only certain lulls are when the sky booms with thunder and fire, like god himself is angry. But here James is, again, acting like he doesn't have any kind of sense at all.

That's half of what Kendall likes about him, but liking James is most of the problem. Girls back home would get in close, coy smiles setting his skin ablaze and his heart thumping hard, but there isn't a single pretty dame who has ever shocked Kendall breathless with her presence. His reaction to James is different, visceral, painful. He wants him like thirsty men need water, like drowning men need oxygen.

They call it sodomy, born from Sodom and Gomorrah, but god hasn't seen fit to rain fire down on Kendall yet.

The world shakes, tilts on its axis, orange-yellow momentarily tinting the horizon like a fake sunset, and oh, wait. Maybe God's just subtler than Kendall's ever given him credit for.

"I miss home too, you know," James confesses quietly, putting out his cigarette right beneath Kendall's knee. The embers suffocate in black-red clay, blinking out of existence with a dissatisfied hiss. Now the only thing lighting James's face is the glow of their lantern, candle burned much too low, the occasional lightning glow of heavy artillery in the distance, and the moon; blood red and gory in the sky.

Kendall squeezes his eyes shut, hands heavy with imagined iron. Cuffs bruise if you try to fight them, but there are much worse things than bruises. He shoots back, "Yeah, well, you weren't even supposed to be here."

He really, really wasn't. Kendall enlisted right out of school, certain he wouldn't see his best friend in the whole wide world ever again, and that was good, that was just _dandy_, because little boys have to grow up some time. He'd made his peace with that a long time ago, secure in the knowledge that his _wrongness_ couldn't chase him into a warzone. Kendall had ducked the searching gaze of his recruiter (shoulders back, spine ramrod straight, sweat seeping into his socks while they poked and prodded and searched for disease and more, that proverbial red ribbon marking him as a witch) and said his goodbyes, enduring the rough hug and James's breath on his neck for the last time.

Only it wasn't the last time. James showed up where he wasn't supposed to be, the mirrored ball above the grandstand glittering light off his smile, that damanable smile that Kendall could spot from a mile away, even amidst some odd hundred WACs and GIs. He was swaying back and forth with some pretty broad, her mouth a bloodred pucker, calves shaped with skill, dancing- dancing!- like he had any real idea how. Kendall is the one who taught James those moves, back when they were kids, hands nipped in at his waist, leading him around the floor of his living room like a girl. Woman. Lady. Person.

Kendall mostly remembers blushing furiously, frustrated with his feet and his nerves, more than a little annoyed at his mom and his baby sister for forcing him to learn to foxtrot in the first place. His mom always said that women liked to dance, but the first and only woman Kendall ever had a thing for was Fay Wray. He liked her glossy curls and the splash of red on her lips, made even brighter by the promotional photos for The Countess of Monte Cristo. She had something of the otherworldly around her, diamond glitz and glam when all the other girls around him came in pink, brown, and paisley blue. He would sneak into the cinema to watch her curves and her grace, the vamp flutter of her eyelashes and the shape of her breasts beneath her under-things, always a little nervous that someone might call him on it. James cut out of school to watch Bulldog Jack with him, wickedness a lingering devil in his eyes, delight kissing the corners of his lips. It wasn't the first time they'd gotten up to mischief, but they were good boys, _nice_ boys, and it made the cheap thrill of playing hooky all the more thrilling.

At one point during the film, James linked their pinky fingers down near their knees, in solidarity or brotherhood or because he's a mean son of a bitch with an awful sense of humor. The why has never really mattered. The only thing that does is that day, which signaled the end of Kendall's crush on Fay Wray.

He was only eleven years old.

James says, "You really thought I'd let you leave me behind?"

And Kendall knows it'd be safer to purposely fall upon the chicken wire lining the top of the trench than to meet James's eyes right now. Stubbornly, he replies, "You should have let me."

His voice is full of movie stars and memories; James's hands on his shoulders while Glenn Miller echoed off his house's yellowed wallpaper, James's long fingers in some blonde's hair while the band and the army and the blue, blue moon saw Kendall standing alone, staring.

He couldn't stop staring back then. From the rank on James's collar to the shine in his shoes, he was every surprising inch the handsome soldier, and every inch of it was _wrong_.

The army has always been Kendall's dream, not his.

"Hey, look at me." James moves his palms up Kendall's legs, heat cupped at his thighs. "C'mon."

Kendall does not want to do anything of the sort. The trenches smell of human waste and desperation, and sex should be the last thing on Kendall's mind, except for how sex is always on Kendall's mind. He is a soldier, but he is also just barely an adult, struggling with his hormones and his honor in equal measure. It doesn't help that every heartbeat spells out a constant pulse of , hammering so hard in his chest that it feels like the organ might break free.

"Look at me," James repeats urgently, when Kendall continues to do his best impression of a block of wood.

"Back off," Kendall tells him, but he reluctantly raises his eyes all the same.

They have walked the ruins of cities that Kendall only ever thought he'd know in poems and history books. He has seen opera houses flanked in gold and mahogany, passed marble statues carved by the deftest of sculptors, and peered upon paintings in colors so rich and vibrant that he was transported.

James is still the most beautiful thing he's ever seen.

He is in close, face inches from Kendall's, and on his breath Kendall can taste smoke and rations and the bitter rinds of what they like to pretend is coffee around these parts.

James is staring, studying, analyzing the curve of his pupils. What ghosts must he see there; Kendall's mother sitting in the golden glow of lamplight, trying to figure out how to pay the bills, perfume and hopelessness stagnate in the air. Bruises climbing his bicep like blue-black scales, each courtesy of his baby sister's right hook. The sarcastic, clever edge of Logan's jokes, Carlos's hellion grin, and the ridges of his father's knuckles, squeezing Kendall's heart as he walked out the door.

And himself, James, brilliant, infuriating, beautiful James. Kendall wanted to put oceans between them, but he should have known better. James is his cage, elegantly wrought, gilded even, but a cage all the same. Kendall doesn't know how to escape him.

James finally says, "You're so fucking brave, but you never make a move."

His words cut off on a breath, held close like a secret, held close like a promise, held close like a heart. James reaches up, to ruffle Kendall's hair or wipe a smudge from his cheek or flick him in the nose, probably, and Kendall flinches from his fingertips. "Don't."

James's eyes flash with hurt while the sky flashes with sound and light. Kendall's mouth drops open, but he speaks in booms and bangs and a drinking song that seems to have started up two ditches over. _I don't want a brother right now_, he wants to say, and _I don't need a friend here_, but James won't handle either of those confessions with anything like grace. Kendall presses back into a stack of sand bags and waits for James to stand down.

James has never known how to take a hint. He decides, "You don't get to tell me what to do," and catches Kendall's mouth against his.

As far as kisses go, it is soft and wet and tastes of fear, and it blindsides Kendall like a thrown grenade. James doesn't let him break away when he tries, pushing Kendall back into the filth and climbing over him, expression blazing. The jut of his cheekbones is intrepid, the arch of his eyebrows determined. He anchors one arm against Kendall's shoulder and sucks his lower lip into his mouth like it's a dare. He is dead weight, a tank, impossible to push away, and Kendall wouldn't want to even if he'd thought of it. He wraps his arms up around James's neck and cradles him closer, sloppy and enthusiastic.

Their palms slide together, skin sticking briefly, like their life lines are laced with spiderwebs. It would make perfect sense, Kendall thinks, because he has spindly spider legs tangled in his stomach, caught between worm guts and moth wings and beetle juice, all these unpleasant things he must have swallowed to make him feel this way, throat clogged with bile and fear and nightmares. He feels every loud noise (footsteps explosions the end come to earth) like a slap to the face, knots in his stomach growing tighter with every second, but he can't bring himself to stop. James entwines their fingers, knuckle by knuckle, the heel of his hand rough and callused and for a single beat it replaces all the ichor in Kendall's stomach with a firefly glow that rends him breathless.

Boots thud, drift close, soil raining down and coating both of their heads. James shakes his like a dog, sends dirt flying in every direction and blinks it out of his eyes, flecked with gold.

"Shhh," Kendall hisses, his breath rattling off at the end, and focusing on the shape of James's biceps through his jacket does not calm his heart. Light tinges sky white, then red, and when it fades back to black Kendall still has orange blossoms blooming on the back of his eyelids, but the footsteps are gone and his heart is still thudding steady as a tank tread. James smiles, soft, kisses against his lips and murmurs, "It sounds further away, now."

Up close, he is a faded photograph, black and white and curled at the edges, those soft, rounded corners where he almost looks unsure of himself. Kendall traces the line of his jaw and knows what that is like. There is nothing he has ever longed for more than this, and his eyes are haunted in every picture they've ever taken together, the bare, gaunt skeleton of his _want_ a constant companion. In a way, it makes this feel like childhood fear too, James fitted between the V of his legs, heavy, sweat pungent, dirt creased black in the familiar lines of his face.

His lip's split right down the middle from an earlier scuffle, and Kendall tastes copper pennies when they kiss, skin warm, dry, soft. The collision of their hips sends white hot lightning streaking down Kendall's body, settling deep in the marrow of his bones. It curls through his nerve endings and dissipates on the needy moan that escapes his mouth without permission. James's tongue invades his ear, wet and thick and unfamiliar, shaping groans that reverberate straight into Kendall's skull.

Kendall jolts up, arches, has to touch, and James lets him. He watches Kendall like he is something irreplaceably dear while Kendall kisses bruises onto the triangle of flesh beneath his collar, firmly aware of the necessity to keep them hidden, at least until they get near civilization and girls. Still, it is hard to remember when they fit like the gears inside Katie's jewelry box, when they dance like the sky and the sea on a stormy day. Cards scatter beneath the scuffle of their boots, bent and streaked with mud, and this carelessness with their toys will not be forgiven by the other soldiers in their platoon when morning comes and they meet again.

But how is Kendall supposed to think about that when there is nothing but James's hand sitting heavy over his cock, his thumb toying with the zip of his pants?

He pants, "If you touch me, we can't go back."

Evenly, James replies, "If I don't, we'll never move forward," and isn't that a fate worse than death, stuck on this battlefield, forever, the specters of their memory reliving blood and heat and thunderous hearts, the stench of death in their noses and the curl of desire in their limbs.

James begins shimmying Kendall's pants down his hips, his filthy hands brushing velvet soft against his thighs and fuck, fuck, fuck, Kendall has got to be dreaming this. He has a half coherent thought, about how James doesn't listen to any of the pamphlets, ignores the garish cartoons about Gonnie and Syph the same way he did back home, when his dad used to warn them both to watch where they wet their dicks or they'd regret it.

Kendall pants into his Adam's apple, his breath wet, James's skin wet too, salty, fitted perfectly between his teeth.

"Alright, stop, stop," he begs, pleads.

James doesn't even listen, growls, "_No_," his hands are huge, warm, rough.

"No, wait, stop. James, I said stop!"

And James stills over him, their bodies inches apart, his heat unrelenting, his body immovable.

"Kendall, why, please, come on, you feel so good, it will feel so good," he says soft and in a rush, pecking dry kisses against Kendall's lips, turning them longer and deeper and slick with his tongue.

Kendall groans, rolls his hips up and forward and oh, oh, god, he wants it- no.

"You are not going to sweet talk me into venereal disease."

James laughs, loud and balmy and so incredibly fond that Kendall doesn't know what he's done to deserve it. "I didn't, you dummy, you moron, I couldn't- it's you." He hangs his head against Kendall's shoulder, his thighs pressing against the outside of Kendall's knees and repeats, "It's always you."

"But all the girls back home, and on leave," Kendall sounds like a madman, his thoughts disorganized and full of ladies-of-the-night and good time girls, an entire mental brothel of the girls James bedded.

"I never slept with any of them," James admits, staring down at Kendall like he holds the stars in his eyes. "Well. Maybe one or two, but. It's you, Kendall. I've been waiting, for so long, for you."

His lips are bruised red, bitten, and Kendall wants to taste them again, wants and wants, and isn't want what drove him out here in the first place? He sat in school an ocean away and thought that if he could not be a good man, a pure man, a god-fearing man, why not at least try to be a hero? Death in some foreign ditch, plague-ridden, miserable, and alone, also means becoming a living memory, never forgotten, or it did to his addled teenage mind. Now he knows a few choice new things about war, about death.

Maybe even about life. Soldiers say in whispers, over contraband scotch or cigars or photos of Rita Hayworth that if a man isn't living, he's dying, and James wants to breathe life into Kendall's chest. Who the heck is he to say no?

Kendall bites his desire into the long, slender shape of James's collarbone, bites down so hard he leaves a mark that is teeth and blue blooms of blood under his skin with touches of real red at the edges, three tiny drops straight from a fairy tale, red so deep and so pure, beautiful and grotesque. James twists above him, gets his own pants half down and between the thin fabric of their skivvies he can _feel_ him. Kendall chokes on it, he sobs it, he screams it because he can, the world ending here and now in the blackness of James's pupils, the tremble of their knees, their stomachs, their arms. They are soldiers, but they are not unshakeable, the clink of their dog tags giving that away so clearly.

He runs his hands across the taut plane of James's stomach, muscle and soft skin and the thumbprint of his navel, the ridges of his hipbones. Back home, he thinks he would sing James's praises right now, a high sweet note like a touched piano key, wind rustling chimes or the twang of finger pads touching down on a stringed instrument. It would echo amidst mountains and valleys and plains, over America the beautiful so that everyone could hear, his love for this boy turned to a symphony, but this is not the land where his fathers died or the pilgrims pied. This is the theater of war, and everything is discordant, strange and out of key, a harsh, stinging slap to the face instead of a caress. Their legs tangle, their cocks swell and jut together, angles that are better met without a scrap of fabric between them. In the shadows between them James is red and fat and leaking at the slit, and when he lines up with Kendall it resonates through him, shivery as a tuning fork. He melts into his best friend and can almost forget where they are, can almost pretend this is a sun-warm field in Minnesota, nothing blood-soaked or grim.

Almost.

He lets James fuck him into the earth, if two boys writhing against each other like they're caught in barbed wire can be called fucking. It is needy, dirty, and so quick that they both flush with embarrassment afterwards, too long in the trenches and too constrained by the clothes they haven't even removed, and isn't this the American soldier's dream, knocking boots without even taking your boots off. James gasps into Kendall's shoulder, a sweet lullaby of nn-uh-ah, and makes a mess of the both of them, and in the places his skin and come touches flesh, Kendall finds his cock sticks and drags in a way that makes his toes curl.

This, this is the heavy thud of shell casing hitting the ground, it is the starburst bright colors of Independence Day and the blare of a marching band gone all off-key. He feels James plant a kiss beneath his jaw, a hot gust of breath and a mumbled, "S'alright, Kendall, trust me," and fingertips dance between them ever so briefly before he is going, going, gone, gone, gone.


End file.
